


21.

by his tongue and liver (doubleinfinity)



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Bantering, Bar Room Brawl, Bartender Chris, Blow Jobs, Card Games, Cock Tease, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fighting Kink, Frottage, Gambling, Gangs, Harsh Language, Laughter, Lipstick, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Tension, Smoking, additionally:, chris is pining, eddies got issues, pretty much would say fighting kink covers it all, they're big bois so they can take it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 02:41:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14823681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubleinfinity/pseuds/his%20tongue%20and%20liver
Summary: “How do I look?” Eddie asked.“Good,” Chris murmured gently. “You look dead.”Eddie narrowed his eyes, an amused gleam of pride cutting through him. “Don’t kiss me,” he sighed, wrapping his arms around Chris’ shoulders. “Don’t ruin it.”Bars | Gambling | The City | Eddie's Room | Chris' Pining Eyes





	21.

**Author's Note:**

> content warning: flippant use of the "r" slur in the narration.

From across the table, Eddie licked his hands and smoothed back his shock of black hair.

A covert grin slashed its way over his face when he saw Chris noticing him from the opposite end of the playing table. The blonde mocked that particular gesture by flicking his tongue discreetly between his forefinger and thumb, which he used to set down the card he’d just received.

The room was curtained in a familiar layer of smoke: spiced like a cigar but stale as a cocktail spit back into the glass. It obscured the warm, steady mahogany details of the bar, from the brown wood of the tables and chairs to the scarlet on the window shades. The five men around the blackjack table could just barely make out each other, let alone the couple playing pool or the businessmen draped at the bar.

Well- Eddie might not have been able to even see the man sitting directly beside him, given that yet another glass of whiskey was sloshing between his fingers. He lifted the drink to his mouth and tipped the shining liquor between his teeth. They were sharper now than when he’d woken up in the morning, getting sharper still.

He let his eyes lick across the cards on the table, trying to count his way through the possibilities. There were three decks shuffled into the dealer’s hand, and while a one-deck game of 21 still left much to tentative speculation, it was even harder to math it out with so many possible numbers swimming around in that pool. Especially when the 6’s and 9’s started imitating each other, and who the fuck designed the club and heart insignias so similarly?

“Hit me,” he murmured thoughtfully after spending too much time looking at the Armenian’s exposed cards, trying to figure out if the guy had made out with a 20, a 21, or had bust.

A baby of a 3 was passed into Eddie’s hand, bumping his count up to a meager 14.

The play swept around the circle again; the two opponents to his right stayed. Chris curled his lips and asked for another card, but his eyes were unwaveringly trained on Eddie during each word.

At the start of the match, Chris had put a hefty amount of chips down. So, as was his nature, Eddie had unfisted the bulk of his night’s earnings as well.

Eddie knocked back the rest of his drink, swilling its bitter sting into his willing mouth. He leaned forward, elbows on the table and head resting on his hands, giving the other a surreptitious look as strands of his hair fell loose.

They’d been fucking all night. In their way.

From the time they met up in the den of the hotel, dressed in elegant attire and flirting on the marble floor, skin catching beneath a golden chandelier. To the walk down the night streets, Eddie’s posture slouchingly relaxed as though he owned the city, and Chris’ protectively alert like he was not afraid to make himself a threat. Then at the bar, their collars loosened and mouths grown slack. And now here, dancing around each other in a flirtatious wrestle over the dominance on the table.

Maybe it’d pulled him taut, all of this summiting tension. It was certainly making him eager to get to the top of it.

The dealer rolled back to him and hit him with an unlucky-as-fuck 7, tipping him over 21.

Eddie kept his expression blank, weighing his options. Then, as soon as the attention was off him, he picked up his glass and set it to the left of his cards, as though asking for a refill. He’d have nothing left to bet with if he lost this round.

Unobtrusively, he swiped his face-down card as he passed over it, slipping the 1 card he’d concealed behind his cufflinks into its place. The 2 that had been on the table was dusted into his lap.

But before he could even execute a cautious glance around, the man to his left started yelling. The player kicked his chair back and lunged for Eddie, grabbing him by the fabric of his shoulders. With all the force of his upper body, he dragged Eddie out of his chair and slammed him onto the table, sending chips and cards splaying in every direction.

The back of his head cracked against the wooden surface with an explosion of pain and Eddie let his mouth tilt into a loose grin. The man wound his fist back and got two punches in before the bouncers rushed in to pull him off, leaving Eddie’s lip burst and his nose bleeding. Red ran vibrant down his face.

He rolled back, arms hinged abnormally over his chest, and laughed quietly to himself. He swiped at his mouth with the back of his wrist, the pressure causing the wound to throb even harder. His eyes and hair were wet with drunkenness, his chest burning with what felt like a flame turned just a little too high to be pleasurable. But something about it still felt good.

The guard pulled him to his feet and ordered him out; Eddie swayed a little as he regained his footing, the drink and disorientation making him weak.

When he was finally outside, hunched against the wall near the bar’s back entrance, he finally saw Chris exit out the back. The blonde looked around uneasily, then found Eddie, and approached him with purpose in his stride.

“You ruined my night,” Chris growled, pushing Eddie against the wall with the force of his body.

“Oh, shut up, you absolute miserable fuck,” Eddie bit back. Chris’ lack of concern over the roughness of his face didn’t bother him as much as it inspired him. His hand found Chris’ shoulder and he spread his fingers out, grasping the flesh. “Your night has hardly even started.”

He leaned his aching head into the wall. Chris’ mouth ran over his neck, hot lips and a flashing tongue trailing over the sensitive skin. Eddie shuddered, his temperature oscillating between on fire and cased in ice from all the competing sensations. The ambiguity of it, mixed with a long night of ghostly touches that were intended to tease, resulted in his cock shooting straight up, hungry for recompense.

“Were you about to win?” Eddie asked in a strangled voice, genuinely curious beneath the mocking air of his tone. Chris’ affect at the blackjack table was shielded, but Eddie could somehow detect that Chris had been feeling fortunate.

The larger put two hands around his neck, using his thumb to swipe at a stream of blood running into the corner of Eddie’s mouth.

“Yes,” he humph’d, a slight bitterness in his voice. “And I was going to buy us the top floor of the The Tanzanite so I didn’t have to suck your dick in the gutter.”

“Crass,” Eddie snarled, pinching the skin of Chris’ cheek. “But accurate. So come home with me.”

Chris took a step back, giving Eddie enough space to sort himself out. He straightened the tie that hung loosely from his neck and smoothed the front of his thinly striped suit jacket. It was too late for his face, but the gore simultaneously made him look more predatory to onlookers, and more like meat to Chris. He felt strong to be suited in both.

“Nope,” Chris rumbled, sinking to his knees and grabbing at the clasp on Eddie’s pants.

Eddie looked around in anxious irritation, eyeing the back door to the bar. He dropped a palm to Chris’ forehead and pushed his face back, forcing him to look up.

“You forget that I can _actually_ cheat at other things,” he hummed, “Better things. I doubt anyone’s even around, but if they see your face, they forget you were ever there. It’s a done deal.”

“I’d rather serrate my wrists with my own fingernails then enter your den,” Chris rejected firmly. “I don’t touch the crime families anymore.”

Eddie smiled and knelt down to meet Chris, running a longing hand across his arm. “Darling,” he reasoned, teasing. “You absolutely do.”

Groomed from a young age, Eddie was the nephew of a relatively well-known criminal, and somehow he thought he was as important as the men who were actually in the network. All it really meant was that when he went flaunting ridiculous, impossible cheating maneuvers, they still let him through the door the next time he felt like drinking.

A laugh bubbled out of him at the sight of Chris flitting his eye down and, in a performance that lacked all the finesse of seduction, fisting an invisible cock into his mouth. Eddie rose back to his feet, spreading his arms open. “Come on,” he entreated woundedly. “Then what was it all for?”

Putting his hands on his knees, Chris sighed and exited the crouching position. “You know, I ask myself that a lot, Gluskin.” But he bent his mouth into a surrendering pout, letting Eddie know he had won.

Grinning, Eddie stuffed his hands into his pockets and angled his head down the alleyway, prompting Chris to follow him back into the city streets.

The night was relatively thick, with smog chasing itself endlessly through the air. The wet gutters were stained by the red of brake lights and flashing neon signs. Fluorescent, multicolored girls with pineapples on their heads and martini glasses decorated the louder buildings. Those blurred images shone like beacons through the foggy midnight.

And it was unquestioningly what Eddie loved best.

The tromp through the town before he got to where he was going. He could feel his fingers twitching with the thought of the night ahead of him. Every clip of his sole against the pavement was an electric force, sizzling him into excitement.

Beside him, Chris looked out at the road, empty except for the cars parked along the curb, and walked away into the open street.

“Hey, wait, where’re you going?” Eddie wondered, jogging to catch up with him.

“Detour,” Chris replied shortly. He was heading towards a small convenience store wedged between the more lucrative establishments. It was marked modestly by cardboard lettering, as though trying to make itself as small as possible. “I’m fuckin’ stressed. Just give me a sec.” Then he pulled open the front door, leaving Eddie alone on the curb, looking out into the night.

In the wake of his lost companion, loud music and even louder voices spilled out from the nightclubs around him. He could see other couples and groups of friends wandering outside, cheering and laughing. The stoplight to his left turned green and a militia of cars came tumbling down the street; one pulled abruptly up to the curb a few feet down from him, splashing rainwater from the gutter onto a girl in a short skirt. She gasped and then laughed in disbelief, berating the male good-naturedly when he rolled down his window. Eddie smiled at the sight.

“Hey,” Chris startled him, pushing out from the store. He was reaching for a cigarette from a new pack, but with his other hand, threw a small bag of funyuns into Eddie’s chest. The younger caught it, the packet crinkling against his abdomen. “Got you a gift.”

Eddie blinked, looking outright offended. “Did you really think that I would eat these _disgustingly_ \- wait, are these the wasabi ones?” He turned to the side, breaking open the bag quietly and popping one into his mouth.

Chris smiled crookedly, slipping the cigarette between his lips. “That’s what I thought, you pretentious, overprivileged shit.” He pulled his lighter out of his pocket and lit the cigarette, dragging it desperately into his aching lungs.

Eddie shot him a look, but honestly he couldn’t hear anything over the sound of his own munching.

They continued walking, occasionally sharing their snacks with one another. Or rather, Eddie ate up about 3/4th of two of the cigarettes they lit, and Chris tried a piece of the wasabi funyuns and almost died coughing.

In the end, Eddie was right. Nobody was lounging around the building that Eddie’s uncle operated from. They snuck down the stairs in the back that descended into a below-ground entry way, Eddie making a nimble job of unlocking the heavy door and whisking Chris inside the haunt.

The bottom level of the building was equally as quiet. It was laid out like a hotel, in a short hallway with doors symmetrically lining the walls. The plush, spongy carpet below them had turned a burgundy color and smelled heavily of smoke. Even Chris crinkled his nose at it.

But as soon as Eddie cracked open a door to their right, the opulence returned.

The room he’d unlocked was clean and spacious, decorated in furniture that Chris would have been lucky to afford in raw material form. His bartending didn’t earn him anything more luxurious than a single-room apartment in a high-rise building. His job didn’t reward him with anything louder than the thump of his retarded heart when Eddie started coming around regularly, sliding into his section.

There was a time when Chris had been forced to make peace with the gangs, but since he stopped selling, he’d pulled out completely. Which was exactly why being here with Eddie was the worst thing he could be doing. It was a mistake he’d already made and overcome years ago.

But tell that to any organ above eye-level. When Eddie shut them into the room and hopped up onto the dresser, every one of his reservations had already melted off.

“Mmm, Eddie,” he hummed disbelievingly. “This isn’t your room.” He trailed his eyes across the pearls on the vanity, the long dresses in the open closet, the antiquated floral bedspread. Eddie might have worn a charcoal paint under his eyes and pinned the occasional rose to his lapel, but Chris could not place him among these items.

“Of course not,” Eddie answered, “I’m not going to fuck somebody where I _sleep,_ ” he scoffed.

Chris turned towards him, an extremely questioning look on his face. But he let it go, reaching out to finger a silky scarf that hung off a full-length mirror on the other side of the door. “Whose room is it?” he asked delicately. The space was an old sort of feminine, all soft edges but for a few details.

“My mother’s,” Eddie responded.

A chill ran up Chris’ spine and he drew his hand back, as though he’d been bitten by the fabric. “Oh, that’s…” Chris managed, taken aback. “Bizarre as hell, Gluskin. She’s… her corpse isn’t in here right?”

What he knew about Eddie’s mother: she had died before Eddie was 10, and he fucking idolized her.

Eddie made any annoyed noise from up on the dresser. “No, her dead body isn’t _in the fucking room._ Jesus Christ, Chris.”

“Okay, well, I’m sorry _my_ comment was disturbing to you,” Chris shot off. He walked over to Gluskin and pressed himself between the male’s legs. “Rich people are… embarrassing.” He slid his hands up Eddie’s calves, cupping his knees. “What?” he asked at the sensation of Eddie prodding at him.

He looked down to see Eddie sliding a tube of lipstick across the wooden shelf, bumping it against the back of Chris’ fingers.

Without speaking, Chris took it into his hand and removed the top, untwisting the waxy black makeup. He turned it over in his hand, examining it, then pointed his curious gaze to Eddie.

Expressionless, he took Eddie’s chin into his hand and press the lipstick to the other’s mouth until his lips were reshaped by the matte, black color. The cupid’s bow of Eddie’s lip pouted in an Earth-shattering way, despite the sharper corners Chris had given it. It was the most attractive thing he could have added to Eddie’s mess of a face, streaked in dried blood, contoured by discoloration.

“How do I look?” Eddie asked.

“Good,” Chris murmured gently. “You look dead.”

Eddie narrowed his eyes, an amused gleam of pride cutting through him. “Don’t kiss me,” he sighed, wrapping his arms around Chris’ shoulders. “Don’t ruin it.”

Chris looked down, eyes wandering at the half-speed of his mind.

“Okay,” he conceded finally, reaching to bring a set of Eddie’s knuckles to his mouth. He kissed the back of it once, then let it fall, driving his mouth directly into Eddie’s neck.

With disregard for delicacy, he curved the flat blade of his teeth against the younger’s pulse, biting down and sucking until he was certain bruises had erupted. He wedged himself in closer, one hand snaking up Eddie’s neck and lingering on the back of his scalp so he could keep him from writhing out of his grasp. It wasn’t necessary. Eddie consented loudly, enough to embarrass and arouse at once. His legs came up around Chris’ hips, rutting against him.

Chris jerked back, his lips popping off the skin. “I mean it,” he growled, slashing his eyes over Eddie’s. “I’m not doing this in some dead person’s room.”

Annoyance rolled over Eddie’s face, his pink flush becoming red. “Why can’t you ever leave it alone?” he barked, hands gripping the edge of the desk. “Why do you have to fuck this up every time?”

Eddie was good. He knew how to incite.

But Chris had learned a long time ago not to be kindled. He kept his expression blank, bordering on unimpressed. His hand went to Eddie’s cheek in methodical disobedience; he ran a palm over the younger’s lips, smearing the black lipstick all over his face. Then he broke the rules and lent in to kiss him.

Eddie opened his mouth, letting him in.

They stayed that way for a few minutes, sharing tongues and saliva until Eddie turned his head to the side in embarrassment over his own vulnerability.

“Well, come on then,” he huffed heatedly, pushing Chris away so he could jump down from the dresser.

He let them out of the door they had come in from, bringing them back into that awful hallway. Eddie slinked down past another three doors and then rattled another key from his keyring into his fingers, unlocking the one in front of them.

When he stepped inside and turned on the light switch, giving a faint exhale, Chris wasn’t sure whether to act like this hadn’t happened or offer a thank you. Eddie’s room was the same size but somehow much vaster than the previous one. He did not have much. His bed was a low-set, sunken entity in the middle of the room, sheets thrown back and wrinkled under the somehow-cheapened canopy. A fair number of trinkets were left out on surfaces around the room- but not enough to make it seem like anyone lived here. It didn’t look like a place he would elect as living quarters. Chris felt as though he could understand why Eddie didn’t want him inside this space.

Eddie meandered off into the bathroom to the left, flicking on the too-bright fluorescent nightmare above the mirrors.

“Sit down,” Chris told him as he followed behind, seeing Eddie peering at himself over the sink. “I can help.”

He got a skeptical look pointed his way, but Eddie slouched down onto the toilet seat, blinking tiredly. Chris pulled a facecloth from the towel rack and streamed faucet water underneath it. When it was warm enough, he again took the male by the chin and started to gently rub the colors off him, turning him back into his normal, pallid self. The yellowish bruising by his right eye and the purple tinge along his mouth stayed, along with the splotches of red on his neck.

“Please don’t kiss me again,” Eddie said suddenly, voice low, eyes angled toward the ground. His mouth was turned down, bottom lip being chewed on nervously despite the swelling from where he’d been punched. “But I want to… start again.”

Chris rolled his eyes. It was the only thing he could do to avoid Eddie seeing through him. “If that’s what you want, I won’t,” he said in a rumble. He dropped the cloth to the floor and hurriedly wrapped each of his hands around Eddie’s feet, lifting them until both the male’s ankles were draped over his shoulders. Then he leaned in further, finally able to unfasten Eddie’s pants.

He stopped mid-way, glancing over for approval. It came immediately in a rushed “yes”; Chris dropped to his knees, pulling the fabric away until Eddie’s growing erection sprung free.

The older wasted another moment by offering up a satisfied smile, but quickly dissolved it, replaced with an expression of clouded lust. He pressed the flat of his tongue to the base of Eddie’s cock and licked one solid line up to the tip.

Pleasure ran through Eddie’s body, intensifying as Chris returned to repeat the action three more times, lapping less tentatively each round. Eddie felt himself becoming flushed and desperate, panting as Chris tongued at him in harsh, unpredictable patterns, sometimes swirling around the reddened tip of his cock and other times teasing his balls until he finally gave saliva-drenched relief to his throbbing arousal.

Chris dragged his tongue up and down the male’s shaft mercilessly, and right as Eddie had reached the edge of his orgasm, Chris pulled back.

With his mind broken and his body right on the edge of coming, Eddie rolled his eyes open helplessly, fucking his hips into the air. Chris’ mouth was directly above his cock, open wide, but he shifted just far enough away each time Eddie got close enough to thrust himself inside of it.

The image and his feeling of helplessness was almost overwhelming enough to make him come anyways- almost.

He made a crying noise and let himself fall defeatedly back on the toilet seat. Chris replaced his open-mouthed cruelty with sharp grin, cocking his head. “Good boy,” he rewarded quietly, placing his hand on the inside of Gluskin’s thigh, still clothed. “Take a second to calm down.”

A few seconds later, he experimentally dragged the joint of his finger along the underside of Eddie’s cock. The male exhaled a frantic breath, still tingling with dangerous sensitivity. Chris pouted and mocked him, a soundless _shh_ shaping his lips. But he did not conceal his pride when Eddie resisted giving into it, his body shaking from effort.

“I’ll have you fucking killed, Chris,” Eddie threatened, sitting up straight. “I’m going to ca-”

Chris laughed, rising to his feet. “Come up-”

Eddie pounded a fist down on the bathroom sink four times, filling the room with the thudding sound. “ _Hello_?” he called out into the air, “I need somebody to come in here and shoot Walker through his goddamn fucking mouth.”

Laughing, Chris grabbed for the younger and put a hand over his mouth, bending down to scoop Gluskin up from off the toilet. “How about you let me...” he insisted, getting Eddie to his feet, “…get into your bed and see what you dream about?”

Eddie shed as he walked, undoing the tie around his neck and pulling free the buttons on his shirt. He walked out of his pants, bending down to leave his shoes and socks in the same puddle. By the time he had reached the bed, was completely naked.

Without so much as shrugging the jacket off his shoulders, Chris turned and sat himself onto the edge of the bed, waiting for Eddie. The smaller male crawled up to him of his own accord, draping his legs around either side of Chris and settling onto his lap. Eddie’s fingers found their way to Chris’ face, spider-crawling along his features.

Chris shifted, cupping Eddie’s ass to manually slide the naked cleft of his butt against his own clothed erection. “What do you want?” he asked neutrally.

“Take this off,” Eddie demanded breathily, slipping his hands into the shoulders of Chris’ jacket and removing it for him. He went for the shirt next, and then Chris’ pants, which he needed help with. Eddie rose up to allow Chris to pull them off, then hungrily clawed at his face as soon as he was back on the older’s lap.

“What?” he demanded when Chris let out a small laugh.

“Nothing, you’re, uh… cute, I guess.” Chris drew back, his eyes darting over what he could see of Eddie with the bathroom light behind the younger’s back. “You’re gorgeous.”

There was a distinct second in which Chris saw Eddie blush. “Please, Chris,” he protested annoyedly, desperate to be touched again.

Chris wrapped his hand around both of their cocks, smoothing them together in a delightfully tame sensation of friction. His own body responded, making them slick enough for faster strokes. For all his own teasing, Chris was leaking precum madly as he masturbated them together, jerking his hips to frot against Eddie’s cock as he hung his neck back and moaned into the air.

One of Eddie’s pointer fingers on his face streaked lower, pulling the bottom of his eye down until it showed red. “Whore.” The word combed through him with harsh teeth, making him hungrier albeit a little upset. He increased the speed of his hand, ready to release.

“Is this, uh-” he asked brokenly, grunting. “Not really doing anything?”

Eddie leaned in, trailing one of his hands down between their hips. He snaked a finger between their cocks, rubbing against them both as Chris jerked them together. “Hmm, it’s doing something”, he mused lazily. He brushed Chris’ hand away and took them between his own, the fine points of his fingers playing with Chris’ length. “Should I torture you too?”

Chris opened his mouth to answer but it spilled out as a helpless moan, bucking his hips impulsively and spurting cum onto both their cocks. His eyes rolled into his head as Eddie ran his hand up and down his shaft, nursing his orgasm to its end.

Leaning in, Eddie flicked his hand, splattering semen onto the bedsheets. “21,” came his guttural declaration of victory. “And you bust.”

Chris took in a shaky breath. He was exhausted and electric, and knowing that Eddie still wasn’t done made his skin even warmer. He wrapped his hands around the male’s neck, breathing in heavily, but remembered he wasn’t supposed to kiss Eddie. He’d already lost, and he was still afraid to break the rules. “How do you want to come?” he questioned, swallowing.

Malleable, Chris let Eddie push down on his shoulders and knock him onto his back. The younger crawled on his hands and knees over Chris’ body, holding himself up by his palms. He lowered his pelvis to drag his cock over Chris’ face, prodding at his lips.

There was no teasing this time; Chris opened his mouth and Eddie fucked into it, thrusting himself down Chris’ throat. Chris’ mouth sucked him down, enveloping him. The extended hours of growing desire and then the desperate chase for release had all built too heavily on him.

He pulled himself out of the blonde’s mouth, running the underside of his cock along the grooves of Chris’ closed eyes, taunting himself. And when he went back for his mouth, Chris was waiting for him, his lips open and tongue out.

Eddie rutted on the flat of the older’s tongue and ejaculated on Chris’ face, the climax flaming through him in three waves. He choked on a sound of his own pleasure, slumping onto his face on the bed. Chris offered a series of licks to his length, making him whine and shake from the sensitivity.

His body airy, Chris was able to turn Eddie over onto his back, letting the older rise to a sitting position. He ran a hand over his face, wiping the semen from his eyelashes. Eddie had his eyes closed, a hand on his chest as he let his breathing regulate. “You’re fucking nasty,” he managed, grinning before resting his other arm over his eyes. “You’re a real one.”

Nervously, Chris put a hand down on Eddie’s knee. “Do you, uh? Want me to make you something to drink before I go?” he asked with his eyes on the minifridge under one of Eddie’s desks.

“Are you gonna go?” Eddie asked too fast, peeking his eyes out from behind his arm.

Chris’ breath caught and it was everything to reel it back in. “I mean… yeah. I was going to-”

“Because if you want to wait until morning…”

Chris relaxed his shoulders. “Eddie,” he mumbled. “I want to, but. You won’t even let me kiss you.”

Eddie planted both of his arms onto the bed and shot to a sitting position. “My breath smells like onions,” he began, words tumbling, “…and I don’t like what it reminds me of, and I’m fucking exhausted and I don’t want to be here alone. Can you please lay the _fuck_ off me?”

He didn’t know what to say, so he sat in silence, dropping his eyes to the bedsheets.

“You’re an absolute dick,” he finally spoke, shaking his head. “And I get it, you don’t like people in your space. But every time you push me out, I _do_ get a little bit further away.”

Looking through the darkness of his eyelashes, Eddie’s face was worn with sadness.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “But you scare me to death. This has never had to mean anything before. None of this. But if it does, then… I don’t know, then everything that happened before does too, or something.”

Chris sighed and wrapped his arms around Eddie, pressing the younger’s back to his chest. He laid them both down onto the pillows at the head of the bed, into a darkness only interrupted by the bathroom light at their backs.

“None of this has to _mean_ anything,” Chris assured him, “It doesn’t. We’re just having fun. Stop getting beat up at my bar and we’re golden. We can do anything we want.”

Eddie nodded, folding into the warmth of the older’s arms.

He would be okay by the morning. And whatever he was getting himself into, Chris would be okay with it by the morning too.

When enough time had passed for Chris to think Eddie had fallen asleep, he felt Eddie shaking in his arms, crying in a way that could be restrained by his mouth but not his body. Chris shh’d him, tightening his arms and swiping away the tears running down the male’s chin.

“I don’t dream about anything,” Eddie said quietly. “I don’t dream about anything.”


End file.
